Whitehurst Aims to Retool Education Research

Grover J. "Russ" Whitehurst, the
Department of Education's new assistant secretary for educational
research and improvement, has a department chairmanship in psychology
at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, 145 academic
publications to his name, and a solid reputation among his fellow
researchers.

So why is he putting it all aside to head one of the Education
Department's smaller and more beleaguered offices?

The answer, Mr. Whitehurst said in a recent interview after the
Senate easily confirmed his nomination, has something to do with
putting his money where his mouth is.

"As a researcher, I've often talked about how the federal government
is not doing as good a job as it should be doing in marshaling
researchers to respond to the practical needs of the field," he said.
"Somebody called me on that."

Grover J. "Russ"
Whitehurst says that as an education researcher, he often
complained about how previous Department of Education regimes ran
their research operation. Now it's his job to solve those
problems.
—Allison Shelley/Education Week

If Mr. Whitehurst feels compelled to make good on his words, he may be
joining the federal agency at the right time. After being overhauled in
1995, the office of educational research and improvement is ripe for
change again.

It's overdue to be reauthorized by Congress and at least one key
Congressional lawmaker, Rep. Michael N. Castle, the Delaware Republican
who chairs the House subcommittee charged with overseeing the research
office, has made it clear that he intends to use the opportunity to try
shaking up the way the federal government directs and pay for education
studies.

Department-financed studies in education have, over the years, drawn
a litany of complaints. Critics contend that they are poorly done,
politically suspect, underfunded, underutilized, and too far removed
from the real needs of classroom educators and policymakers to make a
difference.

The 56-year-old assistant secretary, whose own work on how young
children acquire language and literacy skills has been funded largely
through the Department of Health and Human Services, does not entirely
disagree.

"There's quite a range of quality in the research activities and
products I've looked at—from products that are outstanding to
those where one wonders why they were funded in the first place," Mr.
Whitehurst said. "We certainly need to raise the bar at the lower
end."

Interviewed Aug. 6 during a break between staff meetings, Mr.
Whitehurst was not yet saying how his office might do that. Much of his
time his first few weeks on the job has been spent coordinating and
developing the department's position on what a reshaped, reauthorized
OERI should look like. He hopes to have some recommendations ready
later this month when the House Subcommittee on Education Reform holds
its second hearing of this congressional session to take up the
matter.

He agrees, however, with experts who say that the 330-person office
desperately needs an infusion of seasoned researchers. Scholars of
federal education research history say the office has never recovered
from losing a quarter of its most senior researchers to early
retirement in the early 1990s.

"The challenge is not only the reauthorizing of OERI, but the
rebuilding of OERI," said Gerald E. Sroufe, the government- relations
director for the Washington-based American Educational Research
Association.

But Mr. Whitehurst envisions recruiting new research talent for
already vacant slots. Asking Congress for big funding
increases—for new positions or for anything else—is not
high on his immediate agenda, he said.

"A fundamental part of the job is to demonstrate that we can do
better with the money we've got, and for that to serve as the
foundation for increases in federal education research expenditures in
the future," he argued.

That stance potentially puts him at odds with fellow researchers and
even some congressional supporters who have long pointed to the paltry
size of the federal investment in education research compared with that
for other areas of research. Only about $200 million of the OERI's
nearly $954 million budget directly pays for research.

That's because the office houses a wide range of programs that are
better described as "improvement" programs rather than "research."
Those include the Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration Program, a
grant program for states aiming to experiment with proven whole- school
improvement programs, and regional education laboratories, which
provide more technical help to school districts and state agencies than
actual research.

Most of the office's direct support of research comes through
federally funded research centers and its program for field-initiated
studies. Although it operates independently, the National Center for
Education Statistics, which is best known for its extensive
data-gathering efforts, also falls under the OERI' s budget
umbrella.

Referring to Mr. Whitehurst's argument against seeking immediate,
major funding increases, Thomas K. Glennan Jr., who headed the National
Institute on Education, the forerunner to the OERI, in the early 1970s,
said: "It's a very responsible position to take."

"But if the funding can't be increased, I don't think you'll improve
the quality of research that gets supported by OERI," added Mr.
Glennan, now a senior adviser for education policy in the Washington
office of the RAND Corp.

A Defining Question

Funding is not the only point on which Mr. Whitehurst may diverge
from his research colleagues. He's also not averse to congressional
attempts to improve the quality of education research by writing a
definition of "scientifically based research" into federal education
law. Education research advocates contend that many of the definitions
crafted so far would cut off important lines of research because they
are too narrow.

"My personal feeling is that we do not need detailed, specific
definitions of research quality in federal legislation for an
educational research agency any more than we do for the National
Institutes of Health or the National Science Foundation," Mr.
Whitehurst said. "But I don't think harm will be done by providing
definitions if there are policy people or political people who will
find it useful. To the extent that there is skepticism about the value
of educational research, I understand that a definition of the
enterprise is important."

What the research agency needs more than money, Mr. Whitehurst says,
is greater focus. The focus of his own 30-plus years of work in
academia dovetails neatly with President Bush's call for
"scientifically based" reading programs to ensure that all students
read by 3rd grade, and with first lady Laura Bush's interest in young
children's cognitive development. ("Laura Bush: A Teacher in The
(White) House," Aug. 8, 2001.)

Mr. Whitehurst's own studies suggest that acquiring key "prereading"
skills during the preschool years can help children become better
readers later on. He also sat on the National Research Council panel
that last year produced the report "Eager to Learn: Educating our
Preschoolers," which called for a better-organized system of preschools
in the United States.

"A large number of preschool educators and parents understand the
need to introduce more cognitive learning at the preschool level, but
don't understand how to do that," the assistant secretary said. "So we
need a research agenda around those questions."

He added, though, that his office's efforts in that area would not
draw "disproportionate" resources from other programs of study at the
agency.

Mr. Whitehurst is not the only working researcher to have taken on
the federal government's top education research job. But he is notable
for bringing a strong background in quantitative-research
methodology.

Previous OERI assistant secretaries have included a foundation
officer, a teachers' union official, an education historian, and a
former congressional staff member.

If accepting a political appointment is an odd twist to a long
career as an objective researcher, it won't be the first time Mr.
Whitehurst has stepped off the path he set for himself.

Born in the small town of Washington, N.C., to a homemaker and a
fireman, Mr. Whitehurst entered East Carolina University in 1962 as a
music major.

"I had everything I needed to succeed," he joked, "except talent."
Psychology looked like the next best thing.

Vol. 21, Issue 1, Pages 38, 42

Published in Print: September 5, 2001, as Whitehurst Aims to Retool Education Research

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